The aging mainframe workforce.

The age poll has served to confirm my concern about the aging workforce and the effect of that on the future of the mainframe.

I watched with interest what discussions the poll provoked on the lists. It certainly seems that there are a lot of valuable people working on the mainframe. There are people with years -nee decades - of computing experience and heaps of wisdom to share.

If we look back over the last ten years - IBM has also succeeded in bridging the chasm that once stood between mainframe technology and the rest of the computing world. They continue to innovate and share (Alphaworks). They also continue to participate in standards organizations to ensure that they don’t slip down the proprietary slope again. Sometimes they upset me tremendously with decisions they make like z/NALC (see http://www.cicsworld.com/node/147 for more details). I am of the opinion that it creates an uneven playing field for products like CICS. But seen holistically I believe that IBM is dedicated to the future of the mainframe.

The question is - are we? I suppose (or hope) the initial response to the question would be “Yes”. But the unavoidable follow-up to that is - what are we doing about it?

Are we creating an environment that promotes and nurtures new talent? Over the years I have seen the mainframe world make at least three mistakes:

Firstly we don’t create development environments that promote innovation. As I say this I realize the reaction that I will get. Before you flame me all the reasons for controls, security and standards - hear me out. I believe in all of that - but I also believe that we sometimes prevent developers from being creative by implementing too many controls and procedures for creating new applications. All of us believe in the protection of production environments - but do we really have to tie down development environments with all the controls? About ten years ago at a previous employer - we performed an experiment. We removed the access control from our development CICS; we gave the programmers access to their own compile JCL; we gave them access to define their own CICS resources (with clear guidelines mind you) and we sat back to observe. That amount of trust we put in the developers was returned with increased productivity and a new found trust between developers and system folk. Did we still protect production - yes. Did the sky fall because we let a developer define his own program definition - no. Did we succeed to create an environment that promoted innovation - yes there was measurable success.

Secondly we do not learn and implement the new technology that IBM makes available.
I know - here comes another wave of complaints about how long it takes to test and promote a new version of software into production. But do we really know what those new enhancements are that IBM has just brought out in CICS or TCP or z/OS? Hands up CICS people - who downloaded the 3.2 beta edition and tested it? It was free - question is - are we interested in learning new stuff or are we counting the days to retirement? Let Bob Yelavich be an example to all of us with the passion and endurance that he demonstrated with his work in the CICS world( www.yelavich.com ). I see that in myself at times when I let myself get so bogged down with work that I forget to sharpen the proverbial blade. But if we don’t do that - then next week we sit in a meeting where somebody asks whether the mainframe can do Web Services - or how well does Java work in CICS. Will we be able to answer or will we let that slide because we don’t want to show our ignorance? Or - are we still of the opinion that older languages are “better” than modern languages? Have we allowed ourselves to discover new technologies without discarding the wisdom of the older technologies - or are we stuck in an immature self-opinionated rut counting the days to retirement? Frankly - I don’t think it is always that deficient. Most of the times the new technology falls on us like a wave and we are just overwhelmed by it. Then we do what is natural and we go back to the older technology where we feel comfortable (and more useful).

Thirdly on a more personal level - do we invite young people into our world? IBM can create thousands of university programs to train people on the mainframe; they can create sites like Alphaworks; they can create the software that can do the job - but if we that work on the mainframe do not portray an open attitude of acceptance towards young people we might just get written off as dinosaurs working on dinosaur technology.
Do we willingly explain to a young person why two-phase commit is important or do we get on our soap box and spew out insults that are prefixed or post-fixed with “whippersnapper”? Do we call them over to show them how easy it is to communicate with the mainframe via TCP/IP or do we continue to monologue about how to calculate a Set Buffer Address while their eyes glaze over? In other words - are we being ambassadors for the mainframe? All I can say to finish this point is - “be nice”. Don’t be a grumpy old man or woman that takes pleasure out of frustrating young people - remember that you represent the mainframe.

Well there is no possible recovery after sending a message like this to four thousand people so I will just end with this: I made or sometimes still make all the mistakes I mentioned above. As mainframers we also have to get to the place where we admit that some applications don’t belong on the mainframe. As a forty year old person I am seeing the big wave of older people move ahead of me in life - but I see that wave crashing on the beach of retirement. Behind me I see a younger generation that are keen to learn and frankly more capable to do so than we are. They accept, learn and reject technology at a much greater pace than we do. We can learn a few things from them just like they can learn a few things from us.

Let’s represent the mainframe well.